Tuesday, March 21, 2017

FDA Guidelines

The politicization of diet guidelines, the role of big food and big agriculture in determining what the FDA can say, and the disputes overall about what people should eat -- everything is so troublesome! Maddening, in fact. The conclusion, often, that your mother was right, you should eat your vegetables and leave it at that, is tempting. I rarely comment on this because it's so Byzantine.

I think this very old (2014) article from the Onion is very helpful or at least enlightening. Directly quoted (in fact lifted) from the Onion HERE.

FDA Recommends At Least 3 Servings Of Foods With Word ‘Fruit’ On Box

SILVER SPRING, MD—In an effort to get Americans to at least go through the motions of a healthier diet, the Food and Drug Administration announced Wednesday that it is now recommending individuals consume three servings of foods every day that simply include the word “fruit” on the box. “Though we have in the past advised eating a minimum of three pieces of actual fruit per day, it is now acceptable to eat any food labeled with the word ‘fruit,’ including variations such as ‘fruity,’ ‘fruit-a-licious,’ or ‘fruit-blasted,’” FDA commissioner Margaret Hamburg told reporters, also noting that sweetened cereal or gummies shaped like fruit are entirely permissible under the agency’s new guidelines. “If it smells somewhat like fruit, or even if there’s a cartoon strawberry or orange on the wrapper, that’s sufficient at this point.” The FDA’s new recommendations are expected to be followed up by other guidelines under which anything successfully chewed and swallowed can now be considered a vegetable.

1 comment:

When it comes to diet and nutrition, no one knows nothing (so to speak). At least it seems that way, doesn't it? I think our moms were definitely right about eating our veggies. Michael Pollan, too (Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants. -- it's the not too much part that does most of us in.)

About Me

I live in Ann Arbor, Michigan, but love to travel, to live in temporary places, and to cook and eat in new places. I began blogging in 2006, and kept both a food and a travel blog through 2015. I'm now posting both food and travel at maefood.blogspot.com -- including various posts about Mona Lisa parodies, detective fiction, world literature and many other interests.